Tuff Love

131: The Power of Being Selfish

What if we lived in a society where our desires are welcome, approved of and right, even if it conflicted with someone else’s? Are you shutting down your own desires in order to fit in, in order to please your partner, and in order to be a good person? In today’s world of desire and pleasure, there exists the power of being selfish which is being highlighted in nonprofit organizations like The Welcomed Consensus, Feed the Need, One Taste, and Fill Up America. Selfishness has a bad rap, but one can actually redefine selfishness through sensuality training like Taking Touch where you will learn how to please your partner by pleasing yourself first. Take a listen as we talk about basic human conditioning, how to touch your desire, and what’s underneath most of our actions.

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Back to another show on the concept of the power of being selfish. This is a fun show. My rant goes all different places. It goes into the topics and definitions, how this came about, my relationship to Morgan, relationship to my mom, and the power of truth and how important it is for us to discuss it. If you’re not connected to your selfish, needy desire, doesn’t it sound weird to hear me say that? Does it give you creepy crawlies to think about you being selfish? I’m advocating it and so does Ayn Rand, by the way. Ayn Rand and me are saying that there’s power of being selfish. Take a listen and if you enjoy the show, please visit Stitcher, iTunes, your favorite podcast app. Give us a review. I’ve been listening for week after week. I would love a review. Go there and give us some stars. I love it. Thank you so much.

Listen to the podcast here:

The Power of Being Selfish

I am excited to be here and feeling good today. There’s so much going on in my life and I’m always glad to get back to talk about things that need to be talked about. Now is exception because we’ll be talking about the concept of being selfish. The power of being selfish. This one has set me off on a little bit of a ride in terms of prep and thinking about things and concepts.

I do want to announce a couple of things. First is that the first draft of the book is completed; 60,226 words in four months. My fingers are tired, epic milestone. It felt really good, and then I revamped a little bit. Second draft is due probably in weeks and then third draft. We’re also six months and two days’ shy of the release, God willing, and I’m excited about that. There are so many plans, new website coming. Feeling selfish, selfish in my freaking desire to do what I want, the way I want to do it, feeling good about that, and feeling accomplished at the same point. The second thing is that we’re going to be switching this back to Facebook Live and we’re going to figure out a way for our regulars to see each other. That was the main reason I cut out, also I wasn’t ready. It’s time to send the word about the book in Facebook Live via this podcast at the same time is the best way to do it. Don’t worry regulars, we’re going to figure out some way we can flirt with each other. Not that Morgan puts her video on as much as we want to.

Selfish. I’ve been thinking a lot about this term selfish. In my training, we had a few things that celebrated selfishness. One of that was service is selfish. When I was getting my training, I started off with a group called The Welcomed Consensus and they had a non-profit called Feed the Need. What we would do is we’d go to pick up surplus food, food that was to be thrown away by vendors, brought it to a space, filled up these boxes. These boxes full of 50 pounds, 60 pounds of canned goods and vegetables are headed to the landfill. We filled these boxes, we put it inside of a truck, we go to another location and we’d hand out these boxes. These 50 or 60 pound boxes to these little Chinese ladies who would knock them over.

What we’d do is when we handed the box over, we actually said, “Thank you.” We said thank you to the recipient, the viewpoint being that they were taking our surplus. They were taking from us what we needed to give away so we could have more. The concept was we were being selfish in our service. This viewpoint started with that organization. When I was with OneTaste we mimicked Feed the Need, created a second non-profit called Fill Up America. They did the same thing, although a twist here and there. That was 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of food that we saved from landfill weekly and from the food bank and gave it away. I had probably seven or eight years of nonstop non-profit work giving food away and it changed me, it morphed me. It was a big part of my training to see how much I had. How much love, attention, power, friends and connection I had compared to a lot of people in the world who don’t have food.

There was a way of noticing that was almost like a selfish feeling. I could feel myself on a different level than these people. As horrible as that sounds in the telling but it was true. I could feel myself and how grateful I wasn’t about what I had. There was a disconnection, I deserved it. I worked hard my entire life. There hasn’t been a day where I haven’t worked hard. Maybe a day, two days at the most, three days at the large, but usually I am working my ass off every single day.

My point is I do this non-profit work, it dehumanized it, and I felt the depth of my surplus. It was selfish to give away this food, to work with this non-profit three to four hours a week, sweating my ass off to get it accomplished. Selfish has a bad rap in the world. I did a post on Facebook because I realized I liked pissing people off, stirring the pot. I just do, I am sorry, world. I am sorry. I am here to pull your emotional pigtail. I am here to light a fire under your ass. It’s my purpose. It’s my mission. My mission in life is to get you off your ass and into motion. One of my favorite ways and the most leveraged ways to do that is via Facebook.

I have the 5,000 friends and I can post something that pisses people off than I feel it’s been a good day. Anyway, I wrote this post that said, “Fidelity in relationship is selfish,” and about 50% of people loved it and dug it and 50% of the people did not like it at all. They were like, “Don’t you mean self-less?” I’m like, “No, I mean selfish. I’m deliberate with my words, woman.” “Selfish has such a negative connotation to it and it means serving one’s self. Fidelity is something you do for the other person and it’s something. Don’t you mean self-less?” I was like, “No, this is selfish.”

I keep my agreements with Morgan primarily, first and foremost, for myself. This is where we’re fooling ourselves in the world, that we think that when we do something, we’re doing it for someone else. I don’t think so. I think the other person is a fine motivator. Morgan is my muse, my best friend, I deeply, deeply care about her emotional state and her feelings more than any human being I’ve ever known in my life. When she’s hurting, it feels like an ache in my chest or when she’s happy, the opposite. I keep inside my agreements for me, and let’s not confuse this with anything else. This is selfish and here’s the reason why. Every time I break my commitment to Morgan, to someone I care about, it hurts. It hurts inside of me, and I know that I miscued. I know that there’s something inside of me that’s off and sometimes it’s minor.

I’ve been on this little thing recently where I’ve been checking out websites that are titillating. What a wonderful word that is, titillating. It’s titillating and it was a little secret. I didn’t tell Morgan. I click and click, and it wasn’t porn exactly. It was titillating and I was checking out this website. I’ve been watching these websites and looking at these websites and I was withholding it from Morgan. These websites are gateway drugs to porn. I was holding this from Morgan and I told her. I saw her face and there was that moment of I don’t know exactly what it was. It wasn’t quite anguish. It was more like shock and it could’ve been my projection. It could’ve been a little disappointment. A second later it cleared, she smiled and she said, “Thank you for telling me,” and I said, “I wanted to tell you because it was a secret.” She’s like, “I’m grateful and grateful we have that kind of relationship where we can share everything, really everything with each other,” and it’s selfish.

The burden was off my shoulders because it was a secret that helped between us. My fear was she would find out somehow. Not that she ever stalked me, that I know about. Looks on my website that I know about but I don’t think that’s who she is. My fear was she would find that and then the hurt she would feel down the line. It was selfish. I wanted to avoid that whole thing. I didn’t want to put myself, her, or our relationship in the position where that could happen. I took a selfish act and revealed this part of me that ended up great. It’s selfish. Fidelity in relationship is a selfish act for me. I’m doing it for my own sanity. I’m doing it because it’s important for me when I’m interacting with my intimate friends, lovers, my spouse and my partner that my conscious is clear. It makes life better.

Power Of Being Selfish: Selfish was characterized by manifesting concern of care only for oneself.

Here’s another example. About a month ago, we went on a journey. I talked about the journey on a Thursday and I talked to my mom on a Friday and then on the phone call on Friday, I didn’t tell my mom I was going on a journey. I lied. I just lied. She was going to find out on the following Tuesday or Wednesday that I went on a journey and I lied. The math worked out. Everyone makes sense. Thursday reveal the truth. Saturday the journey was going to happen. Lied on Friday. My mom would find out two days later. I didn’t know if she even caught it. I don’t know if she’d even track or if she would know that I lied through my teeth but I felt bad. It was weighing down on me and I was like, “This feels awful,” because I want to be straight forward with my mom. She’s made it abundantly clear that the truth and clarity between us is important. I called her up. I felt like eating the cookie from the cookie jar. I felt like I was twelve years old, “Mom, I didn’t tell you the truth about what we were doing this weekend. I’m going on a journey.” She was like, “Have a good time.” That was so easy. It was in my mind, the story in the back of her head. My head’s saying like, “You’re a bad son. You’re a bad person.” It’s selfish. It was a selfish act, but selfish has a bad rap.

I looked up selfish at Dictionary.com. The first thing that shows up on Google is it’s an adjective and devoted to caring only for oneself, concerned primarily of one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, regardless of other. Selfish has a bad rap. This got some bad PR. The second definition of selfish was characterized by manifesting concern of care only for oneself, an example being selfish motives. Dictionary.com does not like the word selfish. I went to Urban Dictionary, which is a very funny dictionary. It says when you have a huge amount of interest invested in yourself or when you don’t think about the wants and needs of others. Selfish in the Dictionary.com were pretty much aligned today in terms of what selfish was. It has a really negative rap. On that post I did, fidelity in relationship is selfish, people are quoting the human language and the agreed upon verbiage and definition of selfish, which I was breaking the rules about by posting, saying that it’s selfish and they said it should be selfless.

I want to redefine selfish. When I did my research, Morgan will like this one, I found Ayn Rand. For those who don’t know, Ayn Rand is pretty much one of my most influential authors of my youth. She of course wrote the book Fountainhead, which I loved and read three or four times and the book, Atlas Shrugged. She also came up with this whole viewpoint, this whole culture, Objectivism. Ayn Rand says, this is one for the team selfish, “The objective ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness, which means the values required for man’s survival and for the human survival, the values produced by desires, the emotions and the aspirations, the feelings, the whims of the needs of irrational brutes.”

We won’t go too far into that. She could rant. Ayn Rand can definitely write in a long paragraph. The point was that Ayn Rand is on our side. It’s our needs. That’s my viewpoint of selfishness, is it’s connected to our desires. This is where I have an argument with Dictionary.com, Urban Dictionary, and all the people who didn’t like my definition of selfish, it’s because I think desire and society is persecuted. I think as a human being, living in today’s society and depending what society you live in, and more importantly, depending on your gender, your race, your sexual identity, your gender identity, your sexual orientation, you’re allowed a small box of acceptable desires. Inside that box, you’re allowed to tell very few people, like no one basically. Maybe your brother when you’re drunk, “I had this thought about a cow.” The point is we persecute desire. We put desire in these tight little boxes and inside the boxes, if you’re outside that box, you’re wrong, you’re evil, you’re disgusting. You’re a wanton whore. You’re a fetish. You’re fetishized; all desires outside of the box are fetishized. Think about that. The word desire and our right to feel desire and the concept of selfish are very much entwined. If we lived in society, this is my viewpoint that goes across the border. I said this many times, if we live in a society where your desire was welcome, approved of and right, even if it conflicted with someone else’s, we wouldn’t have so much anger. There wouldn’t be so much division between social stratus, gender dynamics or sexual orientations. A desire for a man to stick his genital in another man’s anus. Sorry to be graphic, but the desire of a man to have anal sex with another man wouldn’t be feared by, persecuted, hated, and disgusted of heterosexual men.

What would happen if everyone’s desire could just be their desire? For a heterosexual man, it’s his right to say, “No thank you. I would not like to engage with anal sex with another man.” That would be a perfectly acceptable thing. At the same time, that heterosexual man has no right to say to the homosexual man, who enjoys anal sex, that that’s something wrong. That’s the way it is in our society. This concept of selfish, the power of knowing your desire, being right with your desire, being engaged with your desire, is the healthiest thing that can happen and we’re headed in the opposite direction where it’s more and more wrong to be selfish.

In my sensuality training with The Welcomed Consensus, and then later with OneTaste, we were taught to do something called Taking Touch. This is an important piece. Before my sensuality training, I was determined to provide a pleasurable experience for the woman. My whole mission, my dogmatic, focused, masculine mission was produce orgasm in the woman. It was the goal of all goals. It was the only thing that mattered. I was oblivious to my own body and my own body parts in the pursuit of this holy grail of missions, that I had no sense of my own body. I had no sense of the biofeedback that the woman was providing. I was focused, focused, focused. Women who are sober or aware could sense my dogmatic mission. We didn’t get any close to that goal at all because I was so focused on the goal.

Then I started doing my training with The Welcomed Consensus and they said, “Try this concept of Taking Touch,” and they said, “Have your hand feel pleasurable.” If you’re at home and you want to experience this, you can have your arm bare. You can take your other hand and you could touch your own arm. It’s not masturbation. Don’t worry. No one’s going to think you’re weird. Touch the inside of your arm and stroke it so your hand feels good. Slowly feel the softness of your hand against your own skin and stroke your own arm for your own pleasure. Doesn’t it even feel a little bad, a little naughty? You listen to this podcast at home or hopefully not at work and stroke if you want. You could probably get away with it. The point is that even itself. I was taught to do Taking Touch, to have your hand feel good.

The example they used is when you pet your pet. You pet your pet, you pet your dog, you pet your cat, and you’re stroking the back of the cat or the dog and your hand feels good. All of a sudden the dog’s like, “Yes, more, more,” because your hand feels good. What was the difference between my dogmatic goal of producing orgasm and my pleasure of petting my cat? I had it in my mind this mission, this thought was the penultimate thing, and being selfish in sexuality was wrong and it was part of my male genderness that I was trying to do things for myself? What The Welcomed Consensus did and the sensuality training did was flip the viewpoint. To think, “If you put your attention on your body feeling good, your hand feeling good, your tongue feeling good, your genitals feeling good, your soul feeling good, that’s what your partner’s going to feel.”

Now, I think I do pretty good with the touch. I think got some skills. I’ve got some chops there, after eighteen years of training, one would hope. Morgan’s told me I do pretty good, I hope she’s not lying. The point was I know how to touch and that’s because I’m always concentrating on my selfish desire. I’m ensuring that whatever I’m doing to Morgan feels good to me, because truly Morgan wants me to feel good and I want her to feel good, and that can hold the same point of the Taking Touch. Let’s reverse this desire and sexuality that’s all about the other person. Let’s educate each other on what feels good to ourselves and what feels good to the other person.

When I would train guys in OneTaste and I’d be in these exercises, this was fun. I miss teaching. What would happen was I would be in these exercises and we’re doing Taking Touch. I would say, “Be lecherous with your desires.” Lecherous, isn’t that a word? You think of an old creepy guy touching you lecherously. I would say it with a lot of approval and a lot of turn on, I’d be like, “Be lecherous with your desire.” I could tell you every single person in that room, except one or two, usually with one or two who got turned on. They would get turned on by the concept of us doing this to have ourselves feel good. Isn’t the worst thing when you’re making out with someone and you can sense they’re doing it for you and their whole body’s turned off? They’re totally in their head. Lesson of the day of being selfish in sensuality is have your body feel good.

Power Of Being Selfish: If we live in a society where your desire was welcomed, approved of and right, even if it conflicted with someone else’s, we wouldn’t have so much anger.

How do we go from here? What is the pragmatic way that we can use these viewpoints? The first is to confront your own viewpoints about being selfish, and look at where it’s limiting yourself and look at where you’re shutting down your own desires in order to fit in, in order to please your partner, in order to be a good person. Don’t we all want to be a good person that’s accepted? Look at where you’re sacrificing your own self in order to do that. I don’t want that in Morgan. I don’t want her to shut down any part of herself to fit in with me. I want her to tell me what her desire is and then give me the opportunity to expand or grow to fit inside of that. That’s been the foundation of the most powerful relationship I’ve ever had is we’ve morphed, changed, and evolved inside the relationship.

That’s the key to it. I want her to be deeply selfish. I want her to ask for everything she wants. I may not be able to provide it now, a year from or two years from now, but I’m so much happier knowing that she can tell me and it’s not stuck in her head because that’s the block in terms of relationship. As we close this rant, it’s getting down to changing the definition of selfish. You can come up with your own viewpoint. You don’t have to use the word selfish. Maybe there’s a word that works better for you. Like I said in the beginning of the show, I do like to create words that stir and create emotion. Maybe there’s another word and if you have it, please email me at Help@KandellConsulting.com and send me a note.

I’m starting to get people asking me questions. You can do that. I love answering questions and I love people listening to the podcast, having questions and feeling free. You can also go to RobertKandell.com and there’s a contact form and then you can send me a note and I’ll do my best to answer it. The point is let’s find a way to fully be ourselves, be truthful to ourselves, be connected to our desire, and then have the faith and courage to truly be connected with other human beings. We’re going to close the show with a question from the audience, “How do you having pleasure in it fit with the wheel of consent and giving versus taking?” The word consent is important to me. I’m consent-orientated. I like to safe port or telegraph.

There’s this thing in society that you’re supposed to be stealthy. You’re not supposed to ask too much of your partner but the consequence of that is that often, we break people’s boundaries without knowing. Your ability to ask questions in the moment is a powerful aspect. It’s a powerful way to know how well to do. You can have your desire, you can think your desire, you can feel your desire, and then you can ask, “I have a desire to do A, B and C. How do you feel about that?” You can also ask outside the sex act. If you’re with a long-term partner and you’re building rapport, “Honey, I have this desire. How do you feel about it?” She’ll be like, “Let’s try it,” but you won’t know until you ask.

Consent is connected. In the Taking Touch, there’s plenty of communication. You have the ability to ask questions, “Would you like a lighter touch? Would you like a heavier touch?” Inside that there’s more intimacy and connection. That’s it. My answer is getting longer. I’m still looking for coachees. If you’d like to be coached, please email Summer@KandellConsulting.com. Very grateful, as always. Future great things are happening. I’m starting to write also for Good Men Project, excited about that. A lot of great content coming in the future as we gear up for the book, which is six months and two days away. That’s it. Go forth, be merry, get some nookie, be selfish, speak your desire, I love you. Thanks so much for being part of this and that’s it. Talk to you later. Bye.

Thank you so much for joining us for Tuff Love. Grateful as always for your participation. Please send it out to your friends, your enemies, your lovers, your ex-boyfriends, your ex-girlfriends, your ex-spouses, your postman, anyone you want to up-level lives. Please say, “You should listen to Tuff Love because it rocks.” That’s it. Go forth. Be merry. Get some nookie. I love you. Bye.